The misc. thread, 3

A nice article about the woman who critiqued video game representations of women (on her channel Feminist Frequency) and earned the undying, truly monstrous hatred of an army of inadequate men:

The Anita Sarkeesian story

How in heck does one even make a double THREAD? pls ignore the other one

This is a slam poetry video in French (+ some Arabic) about street harassment, made by two girls in Oran, Algeria, in a walk around the city:

Toute Fine & Sam Mb - La Rue

It starts "J'essaie de me faire toute petite", I try to make myself very small--sorry about the language barrier but even just the visuals are very eloquent, give it a gander...

Thoughts re: https://www.librarything.com/topic/308075#6889395 that didn't really seem to fit there.

I once had a book that said that everyone needs a wife. Someone who does the little errands, cooks, does laundry, laughs at jokes the hundredth time whether or not they were funny the first time, ... and says yay when you get through part of a project. She said she really needed a wife.

But times are changing, and wives aren't always there when men need them. Even In Saudi Arabia women are going to be able to just up and go places. What is the world coming to?

I guess we just have to say yay! more to each other. After all, women need to hear it, too.

Fascinating look into a bit of American/women's history (regardless of how much interest one has in the topic of transgender):

Sandy Stone on Living Among Lesbian Separatists as a Trans Woman in the 70s

What blew my mind especially was the mention of the lesbian/women's network (the "rhizome", Stone calls it) down which women could travel from one end of the States to another "without ever having to encounter someone presenting as a man".

Ahhhhh. Paradise... :)

This article was linked under a 4-part programme about lesbian history on France Culture which really whetted my curiosity about Monique Wittig (I have some books by her but none read so far, I'm ashamed to say).

I've read Les Guérillères but it was ages and ages ago. I do remember spending 4-5 days at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and how weird it was to see men after it was over and we were driving off The Land. I found it so easy to sink into the women-only tribal culture they had going there. But that was in the late 80s. But they always had a policy of "womyn-born-womyn only" which I think eventually sunk them.

I sometimes wonder what Mary Daly would have done in those days if a transgender woman ever tried to enroll in one of her "no men" classes. It's been a long time, but I remember most of my radical lesbian feminist set being pretty dogmatic and "my way or the highway" about who got to call herself a lesbian. Especially the lesbian separatists, of which I was one, at least an aspiring one, for awhile.

I need to hear more about this lesbian separatism because I think that's where I'm heading!

Stone takes pains to stress that "lesbian separatism" has nothing to do with transphobia--I mean, they were her community.

It's been a long time, but I remember most of my radical lesbian feminist set being pretty dogmatic and "my way or the highway" about who got to call herself a lesbian.

Daly's "no men" in context makes perfect sense to me (but not "no transwomen", which I don't take to be equivalent to "no men" at all). The "we, not you, decide whether you're a lesbian or not" thing, however, does not. That said, I stopped calling myself a lesbian under the influence of a very heated conversation precisely with someone (a lesbian) who insisted I should not call myself one. Not because I thought she was right, but because I realised that if my history/inclinations were too complex to fit under what everyone would agree is a "lesbian", I might as well try to avoid such future discussions. Even if I never ran into another such person. Which, incidentally, I did not.

>7 LolaWalser: "Daly's "no men" in context makes perfect sense to me"

I think I gravitated towards "womyn only" space and lesbian separatism not so much because I was looking for an identity or a tribe to belong to, but because at the time I was pretty desperate to escape the relentless toxicity of what I was coming to understand as "patriarchy." I think it was kind of like when someone escapes to a Buddhist retreat.

Well, YEAH. (No opinion on the buddhist retreats tho)

If I understand it correctly, her seminars or those seminars at least, were meant to give voice to the suppressed and explore the perspective missing in everyday life and scholarship etc. So obviously what the fuck would the presence of men do for that. As if the bastards weren't choking us out of public, out of books, out of consciousness, out of the world, all the time.

Anyway, I like the sound of lesbian separatism because I'm losing hope that there is or can be any sort of universal feminist front. Also I do get sick to death of heteronormativity and always having to count in men and their problems and whatnot.

To hell with men and all the concerns of men and their handmaidens, is what I find myself thinking more and more often.

Daly maintained, convincingly, that the presence of a man in the class would change the dynamic --even if he never said anything -- because everyone else would be aware of him and in some sense justifying themselves to him. Man as elephant in the room.

her rule was challenged by some bozo every year. She would agree to teach or tutor male students separately, but no, they always wanted to be in the class. So clearly it was mostly about the fact it galled them to be refused entry. Young white men could walk into any room in any building on the planet unchallenged -- including the seminary school across the street where women were not only not allowed, but actively discouraged from sunbathing or wearing revealing clothing within sight of the seminary windows.

But can't take Mary Daly's Feminism 101 class? Outrageous!

>10 southernbooklady:

That mindset is still omnipresent. Only what a white dickhead decides is important, is important--and only if discussed in the white dickhead's voice.

Respect!

Eighty-two-year-old woman beats up burglar who broke into her home

An 82-year-old female body builder beat up a 28-year-old man who tried to break into her home in Rochester, New York. ...

Murphy, who works out almost every day at the local YMCA, said she can deadlift 225lb.

Last year I vented some about the glorification of literary representations of paedophile relationships (https://www.librarything.com/topic/256572#6483662 and the post before it), for some reason especially frequent in France and French literature and visual arts. Especially frequent or especially privileged?, at any rate traditionally, for centuries even, served to the public at large as something admirable and desirable--if it involves, as it almost always does, a barely pubescent girl and a middle-aged or older man.

The figure I brought up was Gabriel Matzneff, who published multiple times about his relationships with young teenagers (mostly girls but also boys). Not only did he publish, he spent the bulk of his life being fêted as the edgy littérateur, chic erotomane, "connoisseur" of young flesh, instead of hounded like the scum he is.

But at least some are finally opening their eyes to the real import of the Lolita-ing of literature:

French publishing boss claims she was groomed at age 14 by acclaimed author

... On Friday Bernard Pivot, a celebrated literary critic and journalist who interviewed Matzneff on TV many times, responded to the growing controversy about how Matzneff had been allowed to describe his relationships with teenage girls on literary talkshows without being challenged by the host.

Challenged? I bet they were congratulatory.

And so much bullshit about the French public being in "shock"--what fucking shock? There are the bloody books for all to see.

And this just breaks my heart: "Springora felt Matzneff was indulged by literary circles because he was a talented writer. She asks in the book: “Does literature excuse everything?”

Poor woman, poor women. Being molested by shits like Matzneff, and then this entire dick-worshipping culture that peddles crimes against women as art.

Oh, lol! You couldn't plan this... so I go to the liberation.fr site to see what, if anything they are saying about this--no trace of this "story" anywhere on the first page or among the 87 hot topics listed--but guess what IS on the first page, large as life--the notice of Sue Lyon's death and a large picture of her--as a teenager of course, no one wants to see what sort of hag little girls turn into when they live long enoough--and the headline is (my bold) "Sue Lyon, Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita", is dead".

Stanley fucking Kubrick's fucking Lolita--she's gotta be some dick's Lolita after all, can't let her just be herself for her self, in her real or acted persona.

The NY Times, in contrast (the obit doesn't make the front page at all, you have to click on "obituaries") has a factual and not dick-worshippy "Sue Lyon, Star of ‘Lolita,’ Is Dead at 73".

Heavens, they even mentioned her actual age. That should dampen the fire of some loins.

Somebody could write a thesis about the respective rhetoric here. How the French (NB--a "leftist" newspaper) not just equate Sue Lyon with Lolita, but also add that she is some man's, here the master-director Kubrick's, Lolita.

She is that thing and she is the man's thing. To the last. In death as in life.

The NYT, rightwing rag that it is, nevertheless manages a decent attitude--the woman Sue Lyon who is the star of a movie called Lolita, is dead, in her 8th decade, she is not fourteen, not for 8 decades, she is not Lolita, she is not "Stanley Kubrick's" or anyone else's thing.

Le Monde too does as the French do--front page news, pic from the movie with Lyon and Mason on a bed, and the headline (my bold): 'Death of the American actress Sue Lyon, Kubrick's eternal "Lolita"'.

Sub-header brings up her "barely 15-year-old" age when cast. If the picture isn't enough to start the gentlemen salivating. "Barely." "Barely 15"--how much more exciting it is to be "barely fifteen" than 15, 20, or god forbid, 73.

First sentence--I shit you not, who could invent this?--is: "The young girl with sunglasses shaped like red hearts is no more."

There are no words...

I've always known Phillippe Sollers was a twit, a turbo-grade misogynistic shit and narcissistic idiot but I did not know this detail specifically--that in the early 1990s he called publicly a woman journalist, Denise Bombardier, a cunt--connasse that is, something like a hyper-cunt, or cuntiest cunt--the suffix doesn't have a good parallel in English--because--he, this intellectual dipshit and Very Important Person Because Dick--called Denise Bombardier a cunt, hyper-cunt, cunty cunt etc.--because she dared to accuse Matzneff of abuse, i.e. dared say Matzneff was guilty of abuse.

In the 1990s, a French literary luminary called a woman publicly a cunt because she thought men sleeping with 14, 13, even 12 year old children (yes, Matzneff did), constituted abuse.

That's the French literary & artistic establishment for you.

Wow. There's a book in this for Denise Bombardier too.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/10/matzneff-scandal-france-co...

In a widely circulated clip of a television show from 1990, Maztneff can be seen being quizzed about his predilection for “schoolgirls” by Bernard Pivot, one of France’s most famous literary figures, with fellow guests laughing indulgently. He appears deeply offended when one guest, the Canadian writer Denise Bombardier, expresses unalloyed disgust; the following day the writer Jacques Lanzmann declared that someone should have slapped her for being so rude.

Wrap your head around THAT. You express disgust at some paedo the others are indulging, in public, on teevee, with respect and congenial laughter. The paedo is miffed at you. Other men--famed and celebrated cultural figures of this lofty nation--call YOU a cunt AND say someone ought to SLAP YOU. Because you're such a rude cunt, you see. Spoiling good old boys' fun and all.

So, is France coming round to viewing women as people, consent in sex as paramount, the safety and well-being of girls and minors in general above that of the hallowed male sex's genital appetites?

In a word: NO. Incredibly to anyone normal, this is where they stand:

In spite of the public outcry, when a bill on sexual violence was brought to the national assembly in 2018, and the legal age of consent of 15 voted into law, the clause that would have brought statutory rape of a minor on to the books was voted down. The current, complicated, set of laws on rape deem sexual relations with a minor under the age of 15 illegal, but nonetheless considers that a minor is able to give their consent, in which case the specific charge of rape cannot be brought.

In France, minors including pre-pubertal children can be raped with less repercussion--even zero--than adults.

That literally is the law.

I enjoy looking at the interesting and varied choices published in featherbear's thread. The latest post in the 2020 version reminds me that the feet of clay syndrome for certain authors needs exposing, over and over.

(The thread is here-> https://www.librarything.com/topic/315020)

Alec Nevala-Lee. 1/07/2020: Asimov's Empire, Asimov's Wall.

https://www.publicbooks.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/

The last paragraph is going to stay with me for a long while.

>18 Lyndatrue: Not to mention the great harm Asimov did to his readers in making it seem that women are at best side kicks to men, who probably succeed better when there aren't women around. As a young woman I enjoyed Asimov's books. Rereading them a few years ago I was appalled. He clearly didn't think of women as real people. When they appear at all they are cardboard figures.

Huh, what a freak.

Well, for the most part all of Asimov's characters were cardboard figures.

>13 LolaWalser: Matzneff finally made the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/world/europe/gabriel-matzneff-pedophilia-fran...

My heart bleeds. Not.

>22 southernbooklady: I just read nearly all of the NY Times article. My heart does bleed, but only for all those victims. I thought M. was loathsome before. I would happily eviscerate him.

>22 southernbooklady:

Thanks for that. Yes, in addition to everything else, Matzneff is an Orthodox fascist--and the pig is religious, wouldn't you know it (I read a book of his about travelling through the Near East, deeply spiritual shit).

It's... unspeakably infuriating. I don't think they've undergone a cultural shift. Someday perhaps, but this is still nothing, there is no capacity for facing the misogyny that French culture is soaked in, for understanding how systemic it is.

The society is incredibly sexist not just in beliefs, prejudices, conventions etc. but in terms of simple brute representation--women just don't exist on the scene as subjects and movers, only objects. Even when they achieve status and leadership of some sort, they are still under strict obligation to pay dues to, to agree, to their own sexual objectification--woe to the French woman who dares express rejection of dick worship, even as she's splitting the atom or some such. Any such "rebellion" is dismissed as American pollution and fad. (Date rape, consent, equal pay, fair representation--all are just the American disease of "political correctness".)

They listen to women selectively, only to the voices that flatter their needs and preconceptions. The favoured character is a gorgeous smart young thing who will prefer the old man. Such refinement, such intelligence, such taste... no?

And without facing the misogyny there is no hope of understanding how it happened that this shit--and so many other like him!--were emboldened and enabled in fucking children and writing about it and speaking in public about it---to admiring reception!!!.

Notice how they are making distinctions between the pursuit of girls and boys--it's the latter they find worrying. But fucking 14, 13, 12 year old girls, well, that's understandable.

It goes too deep to have one case change anything. It's completely normalised. Arts and literature are only most conspicuous in promoting the relationship between the old man and the young girl, but it goes wider than that, it's buttressed by economics and politics.

>24 LolaWalser: Notice how they are making distinctions between the pursuit of girls and boys--it's the latter they find worrying. But fucking 14, 13, 12 year old girls, well, that's understandable.

Yeah, that was impossible to miss. The whole thing was disgusting.

>22 southernbooklady: >24 LolaWalser:
The craptacular devaluing of the devalued spirals outward too. Here’s Mitterand on the terrible events in Rwanda in 1994: “In such countries, genocide is not too important.”
It’s as if they were in a depraved competition to deserve condemnation most, except that they refuse to recognize victims.

Masha Gessen talking with Judith Butler about a number of things ("nonviolence" made me think of you, Nicki, that it would interest you--I don't know what to think about it myself) including the intensifying right-wing/neofascist attack on gender studies/women's studies/queer studies:

Judith Butler wants us to reshape our rage

...You have faced violence, and I know there are some countries you no longer feel safe travelling to. What has happened?

There are usually two issues, Palestine or gender. I have come to understand in what places which issue is controversial. The anti-“gender ideology” movement has spread throughout Latin America, affecting national elections and targeting sexual and gender minorities. Those who work on gender are often maligned as “diabolical” or “demons.” The image of the devil is used a lot, which is very hard on me for many reasons, partly because it feels anti-Semitic. {...}

Let’s review this “gender ideology” idea, because not everyone is familiar with this phenomenon.

It’s huge.

It’s the idea, promoted by groups affiliated with Catholic, evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox churches, that a Jewish Marxist–Frankfurt School–Judith Butler conspiracy has hatched a plot to destroy the family by questioning the immutability of sex roles, and this will lead white people to extinction.

They are taking the idea of the performativity of gender to mean that we’re all free to choose our gender as we wish and that there is no natural sex. They see it as an attack on both the God-given character of male and female and the ostensibly natural social form in which they join each other—heterosexual marriage. But, sometimes, by “gender” they simply mean gender equality, which, for them, is destroying the family, which presumes that the family has a necessary hierarchy in which men hold power. They also understand “gender” as trans rights, gay rights, and as gay equality under the law. Gay marriage is particularly terrifying to them and seen as a threat to “the family,” and gay and lesbian adoption is understood to involve the molestation of children. They imagine that those of us who belong to this “gender movement,” as they put it, have no restrictions on what we will do, that we represent and promote unchecked sexual freedom, which leads to pedophilia. It is all very frightening, and it has been successful in threatening scholars and, in some cases, shutting down programs. There is also an active resistance against them, and I am now part of that.

How long has this been going on, this particular stage of your existence in the world?

The Pontifical Council for the Family, led by Pope Francis before his elevation, published papers against “gender” in 2000. I wrote briefly about that but could not imagine then that it would become a well-financed campaign throughout the world. It started to affect my life in 2012 or ’13.

You may recall Orbán's persecution and finally expulsion of the Central European University from Hungary--the main focus of hostilities was its social sciences module with the gender studies department. This persecution under the banner of fighting "gender ideology" has been and is being replicated elsewhere in Eastern Europe although not all places have such schools or departments funded by George Soros.

What strikes me as most significant is the positioning of feminism as fascism's MAJOR opponent.

Note what Butler says about women being at the forefront of the left in Chile:

...When I was in Chile last April, I was struck by the fact that the feminist movement was at the forefront of the left, and it made a huge difference in thinking about tactics, strategies, and aims. In the U.S., I think that some men who always saw feminism as a secondary issue feel much freer to voice their anti-feminism in the context of a renewed interest in socialism. Of course, it does not have to go that way, but I worry about a return to the framework of primary and secondary impressions. Many social movements fought against that for decades.

As I keep repeating--women's rights are not secondary to any other "more important" issues; women's rights are not a "special interest" issue; the fight for women's rights IS the leftist battle par excellence.

There is no real leftism without feminism. (While feminism is leftism by default--there is no alternative for it.)

I just ordered The Force of Nonviolence from my local bookstore last week because of that article. I haven't read any Judith Butler though. I still stubbornly cling to my print subscriptions to The Paris Review and The New Yorker. I'll be curious to read it since I struggle with navigating my way through nonviolence, individualism, and a desperate desire for more simple empathy and compassion in the world. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to actually punch Trump for example, but of course, what I really want is for his pernicious and toxic influence to be eradicated from the planet.

I do agree 100% with you that "women's rights are not secondary to any other "more important" issues". In fact, I'd say that if you sacrifice women's rights for any of those other issues -- worker's rights, anti-racist goals, etc. etc. --- you've already lost your battle and betrayed your cause. If your goal is egalitarianism, then it is really an all or nothing stance.

I haven't read Judith Butler's book on gender, but I've added it to a personal reading list on gender and transgender issues since one of my things this year is to educate myself on the subject I realized I know damn all about. I do think that the next great sea-change in our understanding of what it is to be human will come from the gender rights activists. I guess I include feminism in that.

I know these issues are often framed in terms of individualism and self-expression. I think Butler has a point when she says "Most people who are formed within the liberal individualist tradition really understand themselves as bounded creatures who are radically separate from other lives."

I suppose that, while I get what she means when she talks about nonviolence as an existence based on the understanding that we are all dependant on each other, that we see ourselves are part of the greater community first, and an individual second, I can't help but think that because we have a sense of self, there will always be that need for self-expression.

These days, I tend to think more in terms of self-determination than individualism. I think the latter is not a substitute for the former, and that the ability to have some measure of choice over how we direct our own lives is more important than the kind of unfettered individualism (ei, rampant capitalism) that robs choice and self-determination from others.

Heh, glad to see my hunch so vindicated...

Which Butler's book did you mean, is it Gender Trouble? I have several of hers (just picked up another one) but haven't read any so far. I'd be very interested in your comments if you get to it.

My mind was in a different context with "nonviolence" so I didn't follow that part well, need to read it again properly.

I think Butler has a point when she says "Most people who are formed within the liberal individualist tradition really understand themselves as bounded creatures who are radically separate from other lives."

This is true but especially (maybe uniquely) for Americans. There are liberals elsewhere who routinely adopt cooperative principles and goals. The notion that this somehow limits one's individuality or self-expression is to me simply bizarre (I mean generally, not that this is your actual concern).

This is interesting for showcasing an interesting filmmaker and also for what it communicates about women in art, historically and currently, and French misogyny (which I sometimes wonder if I'm exaggerating, only to be shown time and again that, if anything, I'm underestimating it):

Céline Sciamma: 'In France, they don’t find the film hot. They think it lacks flesh, it’s not erotic'

... “It’s a very bourgeois industry. There’s resistance to radicalism, and also less youth in charge. ‘A film can be feminist?’ They don’t know this concept. They don’t read the book. They don’t even know about the fact that ‘male gaze’ exists. You can tell it’s a country where there’s a lot of sexism, and a strong culture of patriarchy.” ...
The focus of Sciamma’s output is squarely on women, usually young women on the cusp of some major change – and how they look at themselves and each other. ...

Modern, too, is the depiction of enlightenment-era art, a period that, it might be assumed, was overwhelmingly male-focused, but that Sciamma’s research showed to be quite the opposite. “I was ignorant of the fact that it was such an important time for women painters. We didn’t get the memo, because it had been erased from the history of art.” In fact, the female painters she unearthed were so “vivid and numerous”, she felt that to make a biopic of one would undervalue the rest. “So I decided to invent one to talk about all of them.”

This reclamation of women’s art extends not just to those doing the painting. “We call models ‘muses’, and that’s mostly what’s left in the history of art for women artists,” Sciamma explains. “Dora Maar was the muse of Picasso but also a photographer at the centre of the surrealist scene. And Gabrièle Picabia was the wife of avant-garde painter Francis Picabia but also the brain of his work. It’s about co-creation, not this fetishised, silent woman standing there beautiful and mute.”

... resistance to #MeToo remains an issue, as seen last month when An Officer and a Spy, the new film by disgraced director Roman Polanski, received the most nominations at France’s answer to the Oscars, the Césars. The decision prompted 400 members of the French film industry to demand “profound reform” at the César academy, and saw the resignation of its entire board. Speaking after the nominations were announced, but before the board’s mass resignation, Sciamma simply said: “It’s France.”

Usual note: avoid the comments if you prefer your head in an unexploded state...

I just finished Stadt der Frauen: Künstlerinnen in Wien von 1900 bis 1938 (City of women: Female artists in Vienna 1900-1938) so the topic of forgotten women artists, as well as the still ongoing fight of women artists like Sciamma for opportunity and due recognition is reinforced.

>31 LolaWalser: Was that worth reading? I'm not actually that keen on most 20th century art.

>32 MarthaJeanne:

It probably depends on one's knowledge--for me, absolutely, as I had barely known and seen some work of a couple of women mentioned before this (Helene Funke, Elena Luksch-Makowsky...), and there are about three dozen names. It was eye-opening to learn how many women artists there were at the time, how they struggled and were received (or not), encouraged, or more often, discouraged. I only wish it were likely someone would dedicate monographs to all of them separately--unfortunately many had their work destroyed or lost.

I'll be getting my own copy for sure. Note that this is an exhibition catalogue so there are multiple contributors. The essays (about ten? in number) aren't very long--maybe 5-6 (large) pages each.

Regarding styles, they range from turn-of-the-century Secessionist to late Expressionist; graphic art, painting, sculpture, and what's on display is very diverse so I'd think it would be hard not to find something to like. But, perhaps in this instance that question is overshadowed by the value of discovery.

>33 LolaWalser: Catalogues can be very interesting. I've put it on my library list to have a look at once it's back on the shelf. I don't usually keep track of what's showing at Belvedere, and missed this. I was just at the Hedy Lamarr Exhibit at the Jewish Museum. I also want to catch their Ephrussi exhibit which I think includes The Hare with amber eyes (not the book, the netsuke. We were recently at the Albertina for Dürer, and they have a new one we want to see about the history of etchings. Then there are the regular displays in various places that I like to go back to. Vienna has too many great museums, and as I get less and less mobile, it gets harder and harder to visit many of them.

>34 MarthaJeanne:

Sorry to hear you're having mobility issues. At least you're physically close to so many great options!

Ha, I'd have gone to that Lamarr exhibition for sure, what a character. I caught the exhibition on, of all things, Helena Rubinstein there a couple of years ago.

Good that you can get a library copy of this; generally speaking, something that covers a large set of individuals would not be my first choice to get or recommend. But with overlooked groups of artists, especially when so much of their work has been lost, things change. Another important consideration is that it's really only very recently that more attention is being given to women artists so there is much less material of any kind on them than on the vast majority of male artists. So all that AND I'm drawn to documenting this period in culture anyway makes it an easy choice for me.

I missed the exhibition itself too but I have seen over the years a little bit of the art included, items in permanent collections here and there... frankly I wish I had started paying attention MUCH earlier.

>30 LolaWalser: Sciamma is quoted: And Gabrièle Picabia was the wife of avant-garde painter Francis Picabia but also the brain of his work. It’s about co-creation, not this fetishised, silent woman standing there beautiful and mute.

This quote reminds me so much of Painted shadow, Carole Seymour-Jones' bio of Vivienne Eliot. locked away in part, according to Seymour-Jones, because her cleverness began to challenge T.S.'s. What a creep he was!

BTW if a piece of music is by F. Mendelssohn, don't assume it was written by Felix. His sister Fanny composed a fair amount, but it was more acceptable if people thought he wrote it. Actually, even if it was published as by Felix, it could have been by Fanny.

Respect the young.

Rebecca Solnit one what she has learned from young feminists

There is no 18-year-old me, but there are plenty of 18 year olds to show me how much has changed, and to promise through their beautiful insubordination and high expectations that more is going to change. Last year, when a young woman I know shared an essay she wrote about accompanying her friend through the all-night ordeal of getting a rape kit from a hospital, I was amazed to see how truths and stances that were so hard-won for many of us were built into her worldview.

Yeah, I liked that article too (Solnit is hit or miss with me) and wondered about starting a thread on the theme of what has changed in your (general you) view since your youth--that ought to have some potential for optimism--but then thought why bother... maybe I should rethink the rethinking...

et voilà

https://www.librarything.com/topic/317328

>31 LolaWalser: I just picked it up today. The library is open again!

>41 MarthaJeanne:

Yay! Lucky you. No opening in sight here, and I have almost 30 library items to return...

>42 LolaWalser: 25 books seems like a lot to have out at once, and I try to hold myself back. But this time I was really glad to have maxed out what is allowed. Except that the bags were really heavy.

Museums are starting to open up again, too. I really should give the Ephrussi another look, but I think my year card has run out.

>42 LolaWalser: I have almost 30 library items to return...

Oh, well planned!!

haha, yeah, terrible habit--but I'm ALWAYS ready for the hunkering down in the apocalypse. :)

And sixteen items stuck on hold, with two "in transit", moreover. I regret only that the new Piketty didn't reach me before the lockdown; would have been the perfect lockdown read.

That said, I've by no means finished everything I got out yet.

>31 LolaWalser: Thank you for that. It was interesting to look through.

What a life, and what a girl...

Afghan girl shot dead Taliban fighters who killed her parents, say officials

... According to Aber, Qamar Gul witnessed the death of her parents, picked up her father’s rifle and shot and killed three insurgents. She then started a one-hour battle with the Taliban alongside her 12-year-old brother, Habibullah, he added. ...

Nice comments on Mary Sue about the great Judith Butler's smackdown of some transphobic reporter...

Judith Butler Is Causing Gender Trouble for “Gender Critical” Feminists

Never Happened Before (two women!)

Scientists win Nobel chemistry prize for 'genetic scissors'

>31 LolaWalser: Do you read German? I'm currently reading Starke Frauenstimmen, last year's issue of Das Jüdische Echo. It includes an interesting article about Stadt der Frauen. The other articles are also well worth reading. Most have some relationship to Austria. Women who were hidden/ hid others during WWII; women now as Jews supporting Moslem refugee families; very varied, but all very interesting.

I'll try to fix the touchstones later. Right now I even have a 504 Gateway Time-out.

>50 MarthaJeanne:

Yes I do! (read German)--but that's not available online, is it? The touchstone is now working, though.

I posted this link yesterday elsewhere but I think it may be of interest in this group too... I quoted more extensively there (as it's my reading thread), just a bit here:

From the MIT Press Reader, on the occasion of the publication of The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist blacklist by Carol A. Stabile:

How the FBI Destroyed the Careers of 41 Women in TV and Radio

Writing about race, writing about women’s liberation, writing about immigration, all became very controversial. While there were people who still manage to do some of this work, it was not easy to do it and it certainly wasn’t encouraged. Can I give you just one example that I love?

SK: Please do.

CAS: Okay. Do you know the BBC program “The Hour” (2011), which was about a BBC newsroom in the 1950s?

SK: Yeah.

CAS: If you look at that alongside “Mad Men,” I think you get a sense of the long-term effects. In “Mad Men,” what you have is a fantasy of the 1950s in which women aren’t part of the industry at all. They just accidentally happened into it. They’re kind of stupid, and get pregnant without even knowing it, until they give birth. But if you look at “The Hour,” it’s a really different depiction of the struggle faced by women in that industry. There were women in the industry. I think that you get a lot of historical representations that are warped by the anti-communist lens. (...)

>51 LolaWalser: Try http://juedischesecho.at/e-paper-2019/ I have trouble seeing the whole page on my iPad, but theoretically it's there. Don't miss the article on Wiener Küche.

Disappointing. The 2020/2021 issue does not seem to be available yet. I bought the last one in November, and the bookseller said he was expecting the new one in very soon.

>52 MarthaJeanne:

Oh, my, thanks so much, how interesting!! Ha, I was flipping to the article about the artists and got stuck in the one about Ruth von Mayenburg--what a character! Such a variety of themes and subjects, truly remarkable. I'm leaving the food for after lunch--I just glanced and saw the litany of Mehlspeisen and now I can't get my grandma's hazelnut torte out of my head. There's nothing I can get here that's even close...

>53 LolaWalser: Yes, very rare to get an anthology that is not only very diverse, but also each article on its own worth 4 or 4 1/2 stars. I've only got the last ten pages to read now.

Hmm, I thought we had a "venting" thread, but then maybe it was under "misc."? In any case, today's vent:

The Guardian published an article (won't link to it, easy enough to find if wanted) with the title trumpeting (I'll paraphrase) that the victory of the fascist Giorgia Meloni is a reminder that women can be as awful as men. The author is a woman who self-describes as a feminist. The article is no better than the title.

And it's all a pile of stinking shit, for reasons I'll never stop pointing out.

Let's admit that theoretically individual women can be "as awful" as some individual men. I say theoretically, and I will continue saying "theoretically", until someone finds a woman as awful as, say, that American doctor who abused hundreds of girl gymnasts, sometimes under the noses of other people, even their mothers (the infinite contempt of that swine); or the 100+ men involved in the 40-day ordeal of Junko Furuta, or the Polytechnique killer, or really any of the thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? of men who were and are rapists, torturers and murderers all in one. Show me a woman "as awful" as the men who rape three-month old babies because that is supposed to cure AIDS.

Yeah, there are individual sadistic women, murderous women, torturers, beaters, abusers. And individually they may be the equals or worse than some sadistic abusing men. But no woman I know of occupies the pinnacle of depravity that so many men so easily and routinely achieve.

And as a group, there is no decent comparison between the evil women and men do. Articles like these only add unjust burden to the so often hopeless fight to protect the women who are disproportionately the victims of male violence.

And the stupidity of it. Pretending to shudder imagining how awful Meloni must be to become the head of such a misogynistic movement, as if there were no precedents galore demonstrating that the right, ironically enough, makes room for a female leader more readily than the left. But it's always just the one, the queen bee, the token and the symbol. From Tories to Republicans and the Fratelli d'Italia, these parties struggle to mobilise women in parity to men, let alone dominantly.

But the pos doesn't write about THAT, that's not headline-worthy.

Reminder also that for the past several years we've been watching British Tories who are PoC promote all sorts of horrible, inhumane policies. But would the Guardian ever even envisage publishing an article with the title "Priti Patel and/or Kwasi Kvarteng are reminders that PoC can be just as awful as whites"? Even "...as awful as white Tories"?! Why is misogyny STILL the "allowed" hatred?

Giorgia Meloni is as awful as any fascist. She is not proof nor a "reminder" that women are "as awful as men", because women aren't.

And also, what's the point? What straw man said all women were absolute angels of political perfection? Are we supposed to be shocked to find out that a woman can be a fascist in Italy? What about M Thatcher or Liz Truss? What about Marine Le Pen? What about the women in the US Republican party? The Guardian gets stupider every year.

Democracy Now did a segment on Meloni yesterday, on her international appeal. They showed an excerpt from one of her speeches in Hungary (?) & it was terrifying. She's not just talking about Italy. She's friends with Viktor Orban, Steve Bannon. She's talking about the world.

>56 susanbooks:

I know! I think this dumbass non-argument boils my blood especially because I get it thrown into my teeth regularly back home "oh but look, all the elected women are vampire right wingers"--yeah??? well when was the last time you supported LEFTIST women???--and the answer is NEVER. Misogyny runs so deep, that fascist misogynists elect a misogynist woman sooner than the so-called leftists can bear the idea of working for a woman.

>57 LolaWalser: On Democracy Now they were making a similar point, saying how much easier extreme right-wing women have it in politics than left ones. The scholar they were interviewing said in her book -- published several yrs ago -- she had predicted that very soon there would be a fascist leader in Western Europe again & the first one would be a woman. She said she had been thinking of Le Pen.

>58 susanbooks:

You want to hear my theory? Lemme show you my theory! In plain and rude language, it goes like this: politics reward assholery (which is why men are seen as "natural" leaders). Right-wing women, in contrast to the left-wing women, are tolerated since being an asshole is the sine qua non of every right-wing platform. Just look at Liz Truss raring to dismantle every single last vestige of the welfare state in Britain... and what are her critics going to say to her, "you're so mean"?! Damn right she's mean, and proud of it! That's a proper Tory bitch!

So, right-wing women BELONG in politics "naturally", and can do no evil too evil to be right-wing, whereas left-wing women are fatally hobbled by the incessant pressure that women be "nice", be good, be sweet, be kind...

If this garbage actually ends up in a Romanian prison, that alone will make 2023 a GREAT year:

Men’s Rights Influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate Detained in Romania on Human Trafficking Charges

The best part: all of this apparently happened because the unspeakable dipshit attacked Greta Thunberg, who dissed him in return, to which he posted a video revealing his whereabouts.

By the way, I was reminded of the adult men who dragged her through the mud when she was sixteen... I don't care to imagine the abuse she's been putting up with ever since. But I read she had to hire bodyguards.

A teenage eco-activist has had to hire bodyguards because of male shit.

That story made my morning.

Hey, you live! I was beginning to wonder about that conference... :)

Essentialist crap can't die fast enough; isn't dying fast enough; but IS dying:

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I was a paid-up member of the male–female brain brigade. It took me several years and a long struggle to realize that I was just not finding the kinds of differences I expected.”
Cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon explains that there was never a scientific basis to the myth that male and female brains are biologically different — instead, a major reason why even young children behave differently depending on their gender is because they are “tiny social sponges”.

Article and podcast ( I think the link should work for all...):

Social sponges: Gendered brain development comes from society, not biology

A British television moderator's career is over after it was discovered that he had corresponded with a teenager, promised to help him break into television, and then had a short sexual affair with him when the young man was 20 and a colleague. If I read the stories correctly, the older man was in his late 50s at the time.

"I fully appreciate there is a massive age gap, but that happens in life. I think there is an enormous amount of homophobia that it happens to be male, but if it was male-female then it wouldn't be such a scandal," Schofield said.

I find it hard to believe that someone whose daily work was media doesn't think there would be a terrible stink if someone his age corresponded with a young woman for a few years, and then had a sexual affair with her when she was 20 after getting her a job in his show.

I don't doubt that there is homophobia, but to think that he wouldn't be being portrayed as a sexual predator if the young man were female is at best naive.

I don't recall hearing about this before, and it's such a brilliant story:

The day women shut down Iceland

90% of all women went on strike!